Concerning the development of quantum memories for the realization of global quantum networks, scientists of the Quantum Dynamics Division led by Professor Gerhard Rempe at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) have now achieved a major breakthrough: they demonstrated the long-lived storage of a photonic qubit on a single atom trapped in an optical resonator. The coherence time of the stored quantum bit outlasts 100 milliseconds and therefore matches the requirement for the creation of a global quantum network in which qubits are directly teleported between end nodes. “The coherence times that we achieve represent an improvement by two orders of magnitude compared to the current state-of-the-art,” says Professor Rempe. The study is published in Nature Photonics today.

Physicists at Emory University have shown how a system of lifeless particles can become “life-like” by collectively switching back and forth between crystalline and fluid states-even when the environment remains stable.

The “hollow atoms”, which are being produced in the labs of TU Wien (Vienna) are quite exotic objects. Their electrons are in a state of extremely high energy (so called Rydberg states), but when they are shot through another material, they can get rid of this energy in a matter of femtoseconds (millionths of a billionth of a second).

Scientists generally imagine atomic nuclei to be more or less spherical clusters of protons and neutrons, but always relatively chaotic. Experiments at the Argonne National Laboratory, inspired by physicists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, are trying to verify this simple model. To deploy an astronomical analogy, in as much as the majority of nuclei are similar in outline to rocky objects like moons or asteroids, then the nuclei of lead-208 under certain conditions resemble planets surrounded by a dense atmosphere that can move around a rigid core.

Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Ohio State’s College of Engineering have developed a new technology, Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT), that can generate any cell type of interest for treatment within the patient’s own body. This technology may be used to repair injured tissue or restore function of aging tissue, including organs, blood vessels and nerve cells.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physicists have solved the seemingly intractablepuzzle of how to control the quantum properties of individual charged molecules, or molecular ions. Thesolution is to use the same kind of “quantum logic” that drives an experimental NIST atomic clock.

The paradox of Schrödinger’s cat-in which a quantum cat is both alive and dead at the same time until we check to see which state it’s in-is arguably the most famous example of the bizarre counter-intuitive nature of the quantum world. Now, Stanford physicists have exploited this feature weirdness to make highly detailed movies of the inner machinery of simple iodine molecules.

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Superconductors and magnetic fields do not usually get along. But a research team led by a Brown University physicist has produced new evidence for an exotic superconducting state, first predicted a half-century ago, that can indeed arise when a superconductor is exposed to a strong magnetic field.

SpaceX has announced it will build the world’s first commercial launchpad for orbital rockets in the south of Texas. The facility, which is expected to drag the area out of an economic hole, might become operational in 2016.

SpaceX has announced it will build the world’s first commercial launchpad for orbital rockets in the south of Texas. The facility, which is expected to drag the area out of an economic hole, might become operational in 2016.

As a quantum state collapses from a quantum superposition to a classical state or a different superposition, it will follow a path known as a quantum trajectory. For each start and end state there is an optimal or “most likely” path, but it is not as easy to predict the path or track it experimentally as a straight-line between two points would be in our everyday, classical world.

An international team directed by researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, with participation from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, has managed to create an entanglement of 103 dimensions with only two photons. The record had been established at 11 dimensions.

To scientists seeking a basis for future quantum information processing, there is no more urgent or vexing problem than delaying the onset of “decoherence” – the collapse of delicate, but essential, quantum states.